TV ad: is this a good thing?

American real estate firm Century 21 are currently advertising on US television with an ad that, well, doesn’t really seem to say anything positive about the agent. The wife with a strong opinion is trying to convince her “spineless wimp” of a husband (as AdJab put it) to buy a house, whilst the Century 21 agent is listening in on the speaker phone. The complaint people have is that the agent doesn’t really seem to play any role in the sale. She’s practically obsolete, and is just there to get the paperwork done and take her slice of the commission. As Slate points out:

“… thoughtful gestures and congenial chitchat are not services worth thousands of dollars. Much better would have been a campaign that portrayed these agents as shrewd negotiators, or sharp assessors of a home’s true market value. Those are the skills people might be willing to fork over that 6 percent for.”Â

If you’d like to see it yourself then head to You Tube, where the ad is known as “The nastiest wife on television”.